Say something started in Daya's head again. Again she pushed it away, like she pushed all other songs away. Her car's radio was off, something she had never done in her entire life.

Instead of music, she rolled the windows down, letting in frigid air and the noise of Transcanada Highway. She wanted to do the entire drive from Calgary to Toronto in silence. 

The longer she watched the fields of Alberta, then Saskatchewan, then Manitoba roll on to the gray horizon, the harder it became. Black soil showed in stripes where the prairie wind blew away the snow. The rotting stubble of harvested wheat peeked through. Coyotes dashed out of sight. Black crows took off barren aspens around frozen sloughs. Dreary did not start to describe it.

Last time she drove Transcanada on her journey West, she was preoccupied with paperwork and the logistics of her move and her quest for freedom. Rental place this, university transfer that, what Calgary was like, when should she call mom and dad...

This time she was going to Shanti's place, with her degree certificate tacked in her skating bag and a resume, though the VITAL's program director did not gasp, "Oh, no, don't you even think of leaving!" when she had asked her for a reference.

She already knew that the towns dotting Transcanada weren't rustic charmers with boutique shops and hotels. The staff in the motels sounded like they would greet her by name when she showed up, because there were so few customers in February.

Yet, she persevered in keeping herself from filling the boring trek with the music, and it wasn't just penance. She didn't want to substitute someone's songs for her own feelings. 

Four days on the road had to be enough to cut through the brambles and understand what she felt.

The checklist of her failures bounced around the cold silence of Corolla's interior. And until she truly knew it, could tell it in her own words, instead of borrowing the sentences she snatched  from others, she couldn't do better... or fail better, whatever the case might be.

Somewhere in Manitoba or Ontario, a day's drive away from Toronto, Daya stretched on the lumpy bed. She ignored the name of the place, but it had a ubiquitous CN rail service crew staying in and three sets of traffic lights.

The Wi-Fi lagged, and the room had an unpleasant smell of heated dust and something unwashed. Her body was stiff from driving, no matter how long she stretched every night. Instinctive revulsion she felt at the sight of the bathroom prevented her from taking a shower.

She scrolled through the videos of her old practices to select the ones Pavel can forward to Belousova. The uploads went after a few Internet hick-ups. He replied in the blink of an eye with the text made up of three emotes and an exclamation mark.

Daya propped her chin on her fist and sighed. If it were Mike, it would have taken a while to hear back and read like a novel. 

Gods, she missed Mike... and his phone was in her cell's phone book. 

But she couldn't do better yet and she wouldn't accept failure where it came to Mike and her.

***

The first thing Daya did after dragging her packed-up life into Shanti's house was to take a shower so hot, it nearly boiled her skin off. 

Next, she slept into the late morning and hopped on the train to go downtown.

Pavel waited for her at the Waterfront. He looked picture perfect in faded jeans and a beige suede jacket. The faux fur almost matched the color of his hair ruffled by the breeze from Lake Ontario. A bunch of carnations he held in his hands livened up his pastel palette with an infusion of pink, purple and red.

"Oh, you should not have." Daya took the flowers and sniffed. The flowers smelled fainter than the color had promised.

Pavel squinted at the cool sun. His grin showing even white teeth. "You're a lovely lady, Daya, but you're giving this to Irina Andrevna." 

He wiggled a glossy gift bag. "And here is my tribute."

Daya glimpse a corner of a box with artisan tea blends. "Aha!"

"We're doing it the Russian way, okay?" Pavel offered her his arm, and switched to a businesslike tone. "She agreed to see us off the ice, talk to us. If she's happy... And why shouldn't she be? We're awesome! Anyhow, if she's happy, then we'll attach ourselves to a new arena in the Northwest. Will be a change for you after the pastures and pumping jacks, for sure."

"Calgary is a big city," Daya said defensively.

"Yeah." He stopped short for a second to peer happily into her face. "You surprised me when you said you're coming. I thought you'd planted roots with the cowboys out there. Everything's okay, no?"

"It's... not bad." She dipped her nose into carnations again. Even if it was faint, the smell was sweet. "But I realized that I wouldn't survive if I didn't try again. Until I'd exhausted every chance." 

And that's why her not bad from before meeting Mike was a different animal than the not bad of this windy morning. 

"Cool," Pavel said. "I knew you're my kind of people."

Her head spun a little. Part of it was the drive and the time difference. But also, she couldn't yet believe that she was breathing in Toronto's air again. That she was about to try out for pairs with a famous coach. With a partner she'd trained with for a couple of hours.

It was crazy. It felt as too good to be true as the man by her side.

At first, she used the flowers like a shield to ward off any critical glances from strangers, then lowered the carnations and put on a glamorous smile instead. Might as well get started on the chemistry, if they were to impress Russian grande dame.

Pavel seemed oblivious to her doubts. "Hey, how's the lutz?"

"Believe it or not, it stabilizes in the last week. Let's hope I did not lose it with the drive and all."

A corner of his mouth curled upward. "No way. It's rock solid. Believe it."

She had no idea if he was being sarcastic or sincere.

***

The club where Belousova was meeting them had two white boards in the lobby with the medal count in the Olympics. The handwriting and the markers' colors changed from day to day, creating the impression that the staff were racing one another to add the medals to the count.

Daya chuckled as she imagined the excited monitors fighting over the markers. The size of the venue no longer intimidated her. The upcoming meeting with Belousova no longer intimidated her. She stopped being sick with envy from thinking how the others had succeeded where she had failed. Well, almost. 

The half-forgotten feeling that home was where the ice never melted, came back to her.

"Gym 3," Pavel told her, after checking his cell, and disappeared into the man's locker room.

The scoundrel knew what he was doing when he designated her as the flower girl and chose the more manageable baggie for himself. Luckily, all she had to do was to swap her shoes and lock up the change of clothes for later.

***

Daya was used to being smaller than most women, let alone men. Belousova might have been a touch taller than her, but age shrunk her... shrunk, not bent. That posture was drilled in by years of unwavering dedication. Her hair curled up neatly over a wide forehead and her eyes... Daya didn't have time to search for the right word. They fixed on her, held her in place, drew her into their pale depths, then let her go.

"Thank you for seeing us, Irina Andrevna," she said, focusing on saying the name the same way Pavel did. She extended the carnations, glad to be rid of them.

"That's lovely, thank you." The older woman put the pink and purple bunch to the side without a moment's hesitation.

Pavel's tea didn't fare any better, but he threw Daya a secret smile, as in we did the right thing, fear not.

Belousova clapped her hands together, calling them to attention. "Right. I've just watched your videos again. You both have flaws. Or had them a few years ago in Daya's case."

Daya relaxed her shoulders and didn't argue. It had been a few years since she skated pairs. She made mistakes. Everyone did.

She was more surprised that Pavel kept his mouth shut. He beamed as if the coach was singing him praises. Gosh, could he be any more transparent in his grovelling?

Belousova seemed to be satisfied by their silence. "I can correct some of the problems I've seen. A good choreographer can make others appear as advantages. But you need to show me why we should jump out of our skins for you two. Warm up, and let me take a look at you together."

Jogging, jumping, stretching at the barre — through all the familiar motions, despite being irked by Pavel's attitude earlier, his physical aura was matching hers. Contact with him charged her up, making things easier. Stretching, dancing, simply standing next to him was like having a bit of gravity canceled, a bit of fatigue alleviated.

"Show me the lifts from ground up... hold here..." etc, etc, etc Belousova went. 

Daya's first training with Pavel was haphazard and full of surprises. There was no mistaking this audition for discovery play. It was work done with leaving nothing in the tank.

But she was doing this willingly, without looking at the clock or groaning, even mentally. Do or die, die but do. And she picked up any slack she felt in the line of her body, add another tenth of an inch to extension, because it might sound invisible but it wasn't.

"I've seen enough, thank you." It was impossible to tell Belousova's thoughts from her expression.

Daya discreetly peeled sweaty tee shirt from her back, but it clung right back. 

"Thank you," Pavel was repeating in the meantime.

"I must make some phone calls first," Belousova said after he probed for feedback. "But before you go, tell me what are you looking for in a coach?"

Pavel grinned like he'd got news that global poverty and environmental crisis had been just resolved. "Irina Andrevna! This, right here, is what I dream about. Nasha shkola, yes?"

He glanced at her for confirmation, but Daya did not understand what he'd just said. She started smiling to support him a bit too late. The chance of Belousova not declaring her slow on the uptake was slim. Darn.

It was okay, though, because Belousova wasn't buying Pavel's lines anyway. She rounded at him. "If you wanted 'nashu' school, you'd be still skating in St. Petersburg, like I'd told Tata. Then again, Pasha SoROkin would have been out on his ass five years ago, while Pavel SoroKIN gets another chance. So what does an old woman like me know."

The way Belousova overemphasized the pronunciation of Pavel's last name, first one way, and then—the other, Daya figured there was some unpleasant undercurrent going on. She instinctively gripped her would-be-partner's hand. 

If his smile faded, it wasn't by much. "And you're right, Irina Andrevna, absolutely right. Both then and now. But I would do anything to catch up."

"Hmm," Belousova said, looking mollified. "What about you, Daya?"

Again, she was caught off guard.  "Ah, do you mean what I want in a coach?"

Belousova expelled a sigh imbued with infinite patience. "Yes, you. And that was my question."

Daya bit her lip, the memory of Brighton yelling, Beat her, you can beat her! You go, girl! to someone else playing in her head.

She stopped stuttering. She straightened up her already arrow-straight back. She looked full into Belousova's face. "I want my coach to never cheer for someone else to beat me."

Belousova treated her to a full blast of the soul-penetrating gaze. It glued her to the spot, yet after she got over the fright, it had a focusing effect on her brain.

She felt all the distractions, like the sound of Pavel breathing down her neck, fall away. Her goal was clear—skate like she had never skated before every time she went on the ice. To hell with everything else. And... Mike? Not now, not now.

She didn't think she could take this telepathic pep talk often, but once in a while it would be cool.

Apparently, Belousova decided that she had had enough of the eye contact, and released her from the clasps of the gaze abruptly. "Fair enough. Don't give me a reason to cheer for someone else too often."

Daya swallowed and nodded.

"We won't," Pavel chimed in, taking the scene in with the enthusiasm of a boy half his age looking at the Christmas gifts. He kept projecting his charming smile, and to her disbelief, Belousova's lips twitched in response. It was a tiny movement, but it was a win. Well done, partner.

Daya didn't want to push their luck though, so she took Pavel's elbow and edged him out of the gym. "What was that about your name?" 

"Oh, no big deal. My last name? Means magpie in Russian. It's common and stuff. The way they anglicize it though... makes it sound foreign, romantic. Eh, never mind. It's totally lost in translation."

Daya snorted. "Okay, yes, it is. But why did she do that to you?"

Pavel smiled with half his mouth. "You know how I say I'd do everything to win? Well, I lie. There was one thing I didn't do."

"Stayed in Russia?"

"Wasn't my choice, really. I was thirteen when mom packed the family up. Or, rather, when the immigration people finally let her. She was obsessed with leaving for as long as I lived."

"And Belousova knows this how?"

He winked at her. "KGB."

"Oh, wow, long reach..." To herself she figured they had a family connection or that the skating world was small—something far less threatening than the hand of the secret police.

She could not see why she should probe though, and anyway, Pavel perked up like a plant with drooping leaves after watering. He got out his phone, and his fingers flew over the buttons.

There's the name of the dancing studio he was taking his classes at, texted, join in, it's decent.

What time she wanted to meet up for the gym tomorrow, and... on the calendar.

Did she get any gigs going yet? Try calling this guy... texted.

She didn't have to worry. They got Belousova, sure thing, high five, cy!

"See you..." she repeated after Mr. Wishful Thinking. He was so convinced of success it made her heartsick. If they failed to convince the stern-eyed coach, could this bundle of joy handle it? His resilience and self-confidence reached stratosphere from her viewpoint on the ground, but appearances could be deceiving.

But if they did succeed... wow. She would give him the run for his money in the grinning department.   Pavel was right about Belousova. The reputation was not a myth, or undeserved, no matter what people said. During the session, her eyes were always in the right place, her hand corrected minuscule things that cascaded up and up to a different tier of performance.

Reaching for perfection was also exhausting. Without Pavel's monstrous energy to feed off, the post-workout exertion caught up. She leaned against the wall, scrolling through the flurry of texts. 

Shanti, Pavel, Pavel, Pavel, oh! More Pavel. There's half-empty public sk8 @ TSWA, wanna come? 

Mikes' texts sat at the bottom of the log. She did not want to read them, adding heartache on top of the aching muscles. What she wanted was to be hiding her face in the ribbed fabric of his sweater, inhaling the warmth. The daydream was so nice that she had to massage her trembling legs before walking again.

She looked again at Mike's name on the screen and tossed the phone to the bottom of her bag before the temptation overwhelmed her. She'd have to lock the cell away in the car overnight against the insomniac's fever. 

Until she untangled the wires and cut the right one, love would explode in her face. 

Chin up, she commanded herself, Belousova is a sure thing. Pavel and I are the new pair being born, and we'll show them up. I'll do better this time. I can do better.